May '11 Digital Week IV

Blu-rays of the Week

Farewell
(Neoclassics)
Christian Carion’s cold war drama, based on a true story set in 1981, has two worthy adversaries: French actor Guillaume Canet and Serbian director Emir Kusturica play an engineer and KGB colonel who helped the West bring down the Iron Curtain. Drenched in an authentic period atmosphere (with amusing references to Freddie Mercury and Queen), Farewell is a taut thriller with a splendid cast, including Fred Ward as Ronald Reagan, of all people. The movie has a superior Blu-ray transfer; there are no extras.

Freedom Riders
(PBS)
This enlightening documentary recounts the heroism of several brave American patriots in 1961 who rode buses into the segregated South, where several were arrested and beaten. Still, they helped turn the tide against Jim Crow, which ended with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Insightful interviews with participants, others who witnessed the events and historians who provided needed context are featured, along with archival footage that gives immediacy to a long, painful struggle. The movie’s visuals have added sharpness on Blu-ray; there are no extras.

Grand Prix (Warners) and The Manchurian Candidate (MGM)
These films show director John Frankenheimer in his prime. 1962’s The Manchurian Candidate is a true nail-biting classic of the paranoid thriller genre, with hard-bitten portrayals by Frank Sinatra, Angela Lansbury and Laurence Harvey complementing a brilliantly created B&W world; 1966’s Grand Prix, however, is three hours of wooden dramatics and explosive car racing throughout Europe, with an attractive international cast (Yves Montand, James Garner, Jessica Harper, Brian Bedford) doing little. Both films have been transferred to Blu-ray with superb results, particularly Grand Prix’s 65mm widescreen panoramas. Extras include featurettes on both releases, with added interviews and a commentary on Candidate.

I Saw the Devil (Magnet) and Vanishing on 7th Street (Magnet)
These horror films approach their stories from opposite angles. Kim Ji Woon’s I Saw the Devil jumps into gory violence from the beginning, as a terrorizing serial killer gets his eventual (and bloody) comeuppance, while Brad Anderson’s Vanishing uses suggestiveness rather than gore to extract suspense from a blackout that causes people to disappear mysteriously. Both movies work on their own terms, although Devil’s bludgeoning wearies and Vanishing’s reticence induces dullness; both also look terrific on Blu-ray. Extras on Devil include behind-the-scenes featurette and deleted scenes; extras on Vanishing include featurettes, interviews and alternate endings.

The Misfits (MGM) and Some Like It Hot (MGM)
Two of Marilyn Monroe’s seminal roles (one dramatic, the other comedic) arrive on hi-def: John Huston’s The Misfits (1961), from Arthur Miller’s treacly script, stars Monroe and Clark Gable in their final onscreen appearances; Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot (1959), one of Hollywood’s all-time classics, finds Monroe keeping up with the breakneck pace of Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis‘s comic chops. Both black and white films look better than on DVD but are not visual knockouts. There are no extras on Misfits; Hot’s DVD extras (commentary and featurettes) are included on the Blu-ray.

The Other Woman (IFC)
Natalie Portman won the Oscar for her tour de force in the ridiculous Black Swan, but that recognition buried any praise for her equally superb work in this tragic character study of a young woman who loses her newborn child and tries to come to terms with how the baby’s death affects her relationship with her husband and stepson and his ex-wife. Portman’s sympathetic portrayal, as in Black Swan, allows us to care about an unlikable woman, even if writer-director Don Roos eventually leaves her (and us) hanging. The film is given a solid Blu-ray transfer; there are no extras.

Pale Flower (Criterion)
Masahiro Shinoda’s Japanese New Wave classic is a strange but compelling drama about a yakuza who, just released from jail, falls in with a compulisve and irresistible gambler. Shinoda’s unerring camera eye, coupled with Toru Takemitsu’s unerring ear (in which natural sounds and silence are as important as his music), make this a powerful experience, even for those already familiar with Shinoda’s better known films like Double Suicide. Criterion’s first-rate transfer, in which the moody B&W photography positively shimmers, does Shinoda proud. Extras include a new Shinoda interview and commentary by Takemitsu expert Peter Grilli.

The Rite (Warners)
On the Blu-ray cover, Anthony Hopkins looks like a demented Hannibal Lecter, which gives the false impression that this somber, unexciting drama is about the unorthodox priest that he plays; rather, it’s about a seminary student learning about exorcism. Either way, it’s basically one long tease: it’s neither intensely scary nor psychologically probing, which makes it vastly inferior to The Exorcist, if you were wondering. The clinical visuals are for the most part rendered acceptably on Blu-ray; extras include deleted scenes, alternate ending, and interview with the priest whose story is told in the film.

DVDs of the Week
British Royal Weddings of the 20th Century (Strike Force)
The Royal Wedding: William & Catherine (BBC)
William & Kate: Planning a Royal Wedding (PBS)
There’s been an unsurprising run of releases related to the recent Royal Wedding, as most Americans can’t get enough of all things William and Kate (mostly Kate, and her sister Pippa too). British Royal Weddings of the 20th Century is smartly done, with vintage archival footage of royal weddings from Patricia and Alexander in 1919 to Edward and Sophie in 1999. In all, 17 weddings are featured in three hours. The PBS special Planning a Royal Wedding is a decent 45-minute overview that includes interviews with “experts” about what to expect on the big day. The BBC disc The Royal Wedding is the real thing, however: two hours of BBC’s own wedding coverage in HD, and with a satisfying bonus: a 50-minute special, William & Kate: A Royal Engagement, an informative and entertaining look at the couple’s history together.

CD of the Week
Nino Rota: Symphony No. 3, Etc. (Chandos)
Best known for his Fellini film scores and Godfather music, Nino Rota was also an accomplished composer of concert music, ballets and operas. This disc features three orchestral works, each a wonderful example of Rota’s instantly recognizable style. The Concerto soiree for piano and orchestra is rhythmically lively and just plain catchy, the Divertimento Concertante (for the unlikely combo of double-bass and orchestra) is both light on its feet and seriously thoughtful, and the Symphony No. 3, with less weightiness than its predecessors, nevertheless is another beautifully structured work. The Turin Philharmonic, led by conductor Gianandrea Noseda, makes it all sound so effortless and flavorful, the highest compliment to Rota and his music.

2011 Tribeca Film Festival

Tribeca Film Festival
April 20-May 1, 2011
tribecafilm.com/festival

The Tribeca Film Festival began in the spring of 2002 as the brainchild of Robert DeNiro, Craig Hatkoff and Jane Rosenthal, who envisioned an event to help united and heal New York City after the September 11 terrorist attacks. Nine years later, Tribeca wraps up its first decade entrenched in the fabric of the city’s cultural life, spreading out into other Manhattan venues and neighborhoods and slowly encroaching on the New York Film Festival (which began in 39 years earlier) as New York’s premier film festival.

Tribeca is a democratic festival comprising more than 100 features (and dozens of shorts, panel discussions and other events); so even dedicated movie buffs who can squeeze in 6 daily screenings throughout the festival would see 66. I saw a baker’s dozen which showed a maturing festival whose depth and breadth of features and documentaries bodes well for its second decade.

The deserved winner of the festival’s Best Actress award, the Netherlands’ Carice van Houten, pictured (Black Book, Valkyrie), gives a fearless portrayal of South African poet Ingrid Jonker in Black Butterflies. Her sublime, unforgettable performance overshadows the rest of Paula van der Oest’s biopic, which has good, intense sequences visualizing Jonker’s tortured psychology but too often falls into the melodramatic trap of too many similar screen biographies. But Houten is such a shattering presence that it rarely matters.

Strong performances also distinguish other features this year. In Catherine Trieschmann’s 

relentlessly downbeat Angels Crest, the accidental death of a toddler—thanks to his young 

father’s carelessness—forces a small town’s inhabitants to deal with their own inadequacies and 

prejudices. But despite a good cast led by Lynn Collins as the boy’s distraught, alcoholic mother, 

Thomas Dekker as the unfortunate dad and Kate Walsh and Elizabeth McGovern as an unlikely pair 

of lovers, the movie never escapes its own melodramatic trappings.

If you want to see the great Irish actor Brendan Gleeson, pictured (The General, In Bruges) knock heads with our very own Don Cheadle (Crash, Hotel Rwanda), then don’t miss John Michael McDonaugh’s uproarious The Guard, a pitch-black comedy about an unorthodox local cop in Galway, Ireland who teams with a visiting FBI agent to break up an international drug smuggling scheme. The maniacal Gleeson, who is on the same wavelength of McDonaugh’s acidic script, gives an exceptionally accomplished demonstration of how to walk the overacting tightrope without falling off. (Sony Pictures Classics; opens July 29)

Movies don’t get much more glamorous than Last Night, Massy Tadjedin’s sophisticated-looking but ultimately superficial examination of a couple dealing with temptations of the flesh and the spirit on the same night. Keira Knightley (who has never looked more ravishing) and Sam Worthington (without Avatar’s blue pigment) play the tempted couple; that he has the chance to cheat with the equally gorgeous Eva Mendes makes his predicament even more difficult, poor guy. A listless Guillaume Canet rounds out the quartet. (Tribeca Film; released May 6)

French director Cedric Klapisch’s boisterous films cram many characters and story lines into their two-hour running times. His most recent, Paris, was among his most diverting; his newest, My Piece of the Pie, wastes a superb cast (led by a luminous Karin Viard) and the director’s effortless sleight-of-hand in cutting back and forth among London, Paris and Dunkirk, a seaside town where his protagonist, an unemployed mother appropriately named France, resides. The first hour is Klapisch at his best, as the precarious global economy and small-town blue-collar struggles bump up against each other, but the second half falls apart as Klapisch muddies his message of responsibility and accountability with a shrill, feel-good revenge ending.

Director Michael Cuesta’s talent for exploring the lives of people on society’s fringes shone through in his unsettling debut L.I.E. He returns to the well again in the overly familiar Roadie, in which Jimmy, long-time Blue Oyster Cult employee, returns to Queens and pretends to be a successful songwriter and producer for the band. Jill Hennessey is delicious as an old flame building her own singing career and Bobby Cannavale (as he does in Win Win) paints another warmly funny portrait of a loser with dreams of grandeur, but Ron Eldard is a wanly unconvincing Jimmy, preventing Roadie from reaching its rather modest aims.

Romantics Anonymous is a movie that only the French (and Belgians) can get away with: an unashamedly winning fairy tale of love found between two terminally shy people thanks to her gift for making chocolate concoctions and his for running the business. Despite (or because of) its straight-faced silliness, director Jean-Pierre Ameris has made a charming 80-minute trifle, with the help of two supremely gifted performers: the delectable Isabelle Carre and the hilarious Benoit Poelvoorde. (Tribeca Film, no release date yet)

A brutish world is vividly if unpleasantly displayed in Serbian director Oleg Novkovic’s White White World, which covers up its essential grimness by occasionally letting its characters break into song. Perhaps if that device was used more coherently, the movie wouldn’t seem like such a grimy downer, even if Miladin Colakovic’s gritty photography and a splendid cast elevate it above its meager interest. The real find is young Hana Selimovic, who gives an amazing performance as the scalded offspring of a woman just released from prison after serving time for killing her husband. To tell more would ruin the movie’s tragic trajectory.

A particularly strong documentary slate is led by Shakespeare High, Alex Routau’s uplifting look at an annual program several California schools participate in, as the students—many of whom come from broken homes or have had tragedy touch their lives thanks to poverty, drugs or gangs—act out Shakespeare’s plays in their own ways, in the process getting their first chance to hone new skills and talents. Routau’s engaging movie include interviews with the program’s most illustrious alumni: Kevin Spacey, Mare Winningham, Val Kilmer and Richard Dreyfuss.

The festival’s most timely film, Revenge of the Electric Car, is a rare documentary sequel. The original Who Killed the Electric Car? showed how quickly automakers wanted to eliminate the car that could have changed their industry, and Chris Paine’s follow-up displays that, in a totally different landscape of a failed economy and high oil prices, electric cars are—surprise!—making a comeback. Such a prescient, philosophical and entertaining treatise as Revenge of the Electric Car should be must-viewing for anyone involved in “fixing” our broken economy.

The Miners’ Hymns, Bill Morrison’s provocative, dream-like reminiscence, comprises newly restored British Film Institute footage of coal miners working below the earth and their families celebrating what seemed an unassailable way of life. Morrison’s evocative imagery shows what remains of the mine locations today and provides a glimpse of a hard-working generation that sometimes gave their lives in a most dangerous, and thankless, occupation.

Yugoslavia’s national cinema pretty much disappeared after President Tito’s death in 1980. But as Mila Turajlic’s Cinema Komunisto entertainingly and educationally shows, it was one of the most stable and efficiently run cinemas in Europe for many decades. With a plethora of clips, archival footage and interviews with filmmakers, actors, producers and even Tito’s personal projectionist, the documentary is an elegy for a lost cinematic history that’s also practical: it points out that even a notable success like 1969′s Oscar-nominated The Battle of Neretva had the distinction of blowing up an actual bridge twice for a pivotal shot that didn’t even end up in the film. Maybe that could stand as a metaphor for what happened to this once-thriving industry.

There’s only one Carol Channing, and the aptly named Carol Channing: Larger than L presents the now 90-year-old Broadway legend in her element, giving viewers a tour of her eventful life and career, from her childhood to her classic performance in Hello Dolly to her finding love a man with a man she hadn’t seen in 70 years since junior high, Harry Kujilian, whom she married in 2003. Dori Berinstein’s affectionate portrait of the ultimate, if offbeat, Broadway baby is 83 minutes of pure bliss.

Two Couples, One Baby

Dizzia and Keller in Cradle and All (photo by Joan Marcus)

Cradle and All
Written by Daniel Goldfarb
Directed by Sam Buntrock
Starring Maria Dizzia, Greg Keller

Performances through June 19, 2011
Manhattan Theatre Club, New York City Center, 131 West 55th Street
manhattantheatreclub.com

Daniel Goldfarb’s The Retributionists might have reduced Nazi-era horrors to mere soap opera, but his slight new comedy Cradle and All engagingly shows how having (or not having) a child affects two couples in the same Brooklyn Heights apartment building.

The first half, Infantry, introduces Claire, a 39-year-old (or is it 41?) former movie actress whose fertility clock is winding down. She tells reluctant boyfriend Luke that she wants a baby, triggering confessional soul-searching on her part (he’s pretty much reduced to a listener). The second half, The Extinction Method, set in the apartment down the hall, has zombified parents Annie and Nate trying one last-ditch attempt to get their 11-month-old daughter to fall asleep without placating her, however long she cries. Needless to say, she carries on for hours, driving them to reexamine their very relationship.

Throughout Cradle and All, Goldfarb shows a knack for how adults deal with momentous events missing from The Retributionists: his clever dialogue catches all the attendant recriminations, insults and occasional reconciliations, even if much of what happens remains superficial.

Although The Extinction Method seems more successful because there are more laughs, I actually liked the more somber Infantry, and not merely because too many of Method’s jokes are repeated (how many times can we hear the baby’s screaming and the couple’s increasingly harried attempts to deal with it?). Infantry actually tries to bring a character to life, as Claire gives a lengthy speech, punctuated by Luke’s interjections, that explains her motives for wanting a baby at this time in her life. Maria Dizzia, giving a splendid and moving reading, actually makes us feel for Claire, personalizing her predicament in ways that Goldfarb only hints at in his writing,.

Dizzia is as convincingly frumpy as overtired mother Annie in Method as she is ravishingly desperate in Infantry; conversely, Greg Keller, who doesn’t make much of an impression in Infantry because Goldfarb isn’t as interested in Luke, works harder and more effectively as Method's Nate.

Goldfarb’s ear for how these people talk is hampered by too much pop culture name-checking, as references to Mad Men, Keanu Reeves, Blue Man Group, Tyra Banks, James Lipton and The Daily Show abound. The playwright does hit on trenchant lines, as how young girls engaging in oral sex in grade school are “part of the Clinton legacy,” and the final dialogue between Annie and Nate while they prepare to have sex for the first time since her pregnancy has an appropriately acidic edge to its humor.

Sam Buntrock’s by-the-numbers direction of Infantry gives way to the livelier Method, likely due to the second half’s lighter touch. Both of Neil Patel’s apartment sets are so dead-on in their details that one wants to move right in: but only if these couples and their baby problems are jettisoned.

May '11 Digital Week III

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Dad-to-Be Blues

Chaplin and Barron in Knickerbocker (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Knickerbocker
Written by Jonathan Marc Sherman
Directed by Pippin Parker
Starring Mia Barron, Alexander Chaplin, Bob Dishy, Christina Kirk, Drew Madland, Zak Orth, Ben Shenkman

Performances through May 29, 2011
Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street
publictheater.org

In Jonathan Marc Sherman’s agreeably slight Knickerbocker, impending fatherhood haunts 40-year-old Jerry, whose anxiety contrasts with wife Pauline’s levelheadedness. The first of seven scenes, which introduces the couple, with Pauline three months into her pregnancy, shows them good-naturedly picking a name for their peach-sized unborn son.

Six more scenes follow in the six months counting down to the big day in October, all set in Jerry’s favorite restaurant in the neighborhood near the Public Theater. After Pauline’s first appearance (she returns in July and October), there’s his best friend, straight-shooting Melvin; his former but still flirty girlfriend, Tara; his other best friend, unrepentant stoner Chester; and his father, Raymond.

Knickerbocker is a series of vignettes, some funny, some more serious, but none probing all that deeply, thanks to Sherman’s labored dialogue. The best moments come during Jerry’s rather touching talk with his dad, which goes for sentiment instead of the easy laughs sprinkled throughout the rest of the play. (Do we really need to hear Jerry and Tara discuss how his sperm tastes or her taking her shirt off at a Who concert, or Charles being happily oblivious to maturity or responsibility?)

It’s unfortunate that Sherman ends Knickerbocker with one final Jerry-Pauline scene the day before she enters the hospital for her C-section, because it spoils the gentle poignance of Jerry reminiscing with his father.

Christina Kirk (Tara) and Zak Orth (Chester) overdo their admittedly caricatured parts, while Mia Barron makes an engaging Pauline, Ben Shenkman a nicely restrained Melvin and Bob Dishy an amusingly flustered Raymond. Alexander Chaplin, the lone actor onstage for the entire play, amiably plays off the rest of the cast.

Pippin Parker’s efficient staging, which uses one semi-circular restaurant table for all the scenes, doesn’t solve a big sightline problem: the back of one performer’s head often faces certain members of the audience. (The titles that introduce each scene are also not visible to some viewers.) Knickerbocker, finally, has too few insights to compensate for its overreliance on a certain quirkiness that first amuses then sags.

The Housewife from New Jersey

Leavel and Louis in Baby It's You! (photo by Ari Mintz)

Baby It’s You!
Book by Floyd Mutrux and Colin Escott
Choreographed by Birgitte Mutrux
Directed by Floyd Mutrux and Sheldon Epps
Starring Beth Leavel, Allan Louis, Geno Henderson, Erica Ash, Kelli Barrett, Kyra DaCosta, Erica Dorfler, JahI A. Kearse, Barry Pearl, Christina Sajous, Crystal Starr, Brandon Uranowitz

Performances through September 4, 2011
Broadhurst Theatre, 235 West 44th Street
babyitsyouonbroadway.com

As jukebox musicals go, Baby It’s You! is closer to Jersey Boys than Momma Mia: maybe not in quality, but in its use of music to tell a true story rather than a fabricated soap opera. The early ‘60s hit-making girl group the Shirelles’ songs form the skeleton of this stage bio of Florence Greenberg, a typical Jewish housewife from Passaic who became the quartet’s manager and steered them to short-lived success.

Greenberg’s story—which touches on always-pertinent topics like music biz racism and sexism, even if they’re simply name-checked without delving too deeply before returning to the hit parade—personalizes Baby It’s You! in a way that jazzes up creator/co-director Floyd Mutrux’s otherwise rote “band history” comedy-drama, whose 2-½ hour running time is dominated but a slog through several years of pop history before the Beatles invaded America and changed everything in 1964.

Florence deals with her increasingly fractious (and melodramatic) home life: nagging husband Bernie believes her music “hobby” is just a phase, their blind son Stanley writes his own minor hit songs, and her daughter Mary Jane—who discovered the Shirelles in high school—is put off by the fact that Florence is more of a mother to those four young women than to her. Then there are the issues she faces on the business side: as the lone female, she learns the hard way that it’s a dog-eat-dog world, while her love affair with Luther Dixon, the black songwriter who becomes her record-label partner, is frowned upon by all parties, personal and professional.

But Baby It’s You doesn’t trust Florence’s story alone to keep interest, so Mutrux and Colin Escott’s choppy book provides a narrator, a DJ named Jocko, who explains things and checks off what was popular on TV and at the movies for certain years (1960 Best Picture Oscar, The Apartment; Best Actress, Liz Taylor). The first act moves quickly as we get caught up in Florence’s liberation and the Shirelles’ rise to fame; the second act, conversely, is padded by so many song interludes (performances by Lesley Gore, Dionne Warwick, Gene Chandler and Kingsman) that the crumbling of Florence’s marriage, her relationship with Luther and the Shirelles’ career all seem like afterthoughts.

But the audience doesn’t care: they came to hear dozens of the hits of yesteryear, and they get them. Shirelles’ hits like “Dedicated to the One I Love,” “Soldier Boy” and the Bert Bacharach-Hal David title song preside, but there are also Dionne Warwick’s “Don’t Make Me Over” and “Walk on By,” and others like “Since I Don’t Have You,” “Duke of Earl” and “Louie Louie.” The Shirelles’ biggest hit, the Carole King-penned Number One smash “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” is not in the show, apparently because King may create her own musical someday.

An ace onstage band knocks out these and other tunes, and the performers have a blast belting them: Erica Ash, Kyra Da Costa, Crystal Starr and Christina Sajous are a vocally formidable quartet as the Shirelles, with Ash doing additional good work as Dionne Warwick. Geno Henderson and Allan Louis make memorable music as Jocko and Luther, respectively.

The always-amazing Kelli Barrett, who’s been treated badly by Broadway (she was delightful in the otherwise forgettable Rock of Ages off-Broadway, but was not in it when it transferred), gets only a few song showcases as (mostly) Mary Jane and (once) Lesley Gore, but she stops the show each time. Tony-nominated Beth Leavel grabs the part of Florence by the throat and, with a powerhouse voice and charismatic stage presence, transforms a caricature into an indelible portrait of a Jersey housewife finding herself in the Big Apple.

The Real ‘Royal’ Kate

Soprano Kate Royal performs A Lesson in Love

May 20, 2011
Weill Recital Hall
Carnegie Hall, 57th Street and 7th Avenue
carnegiehall.org

Forget about the former Kate Middleton. The real “Royal Kate” is British soprano Kate Royal, who winds up a busy season in New York on May 20 with her long-awaited Carnegie Hall recital debut in the intimate Weill Recital Hall. This comes on the heels of her Carnegie performance with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra last December and her Metropolitan Opera debut in Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice last month.

Royal’s recital (part of her first North American tour which also includes stops in Montreal, San Francisco, Atlanta, Vancouver and Vermont) will be taken up by the entirety of her latest EMI Classics CD release, A Lesson in Love, in which she and pianist Malcolm Martineau perform a selection of 29 songs to tell the story of one woman’s journey from youth to maturity via love and betrayal. The composers, which include Schumann, Faure, Wolf, Liszt, Debussy, Ravel, Strauss, Brahms, Britten and Schubert, were personally chosen by Royal, whose acute musical intelligence ranks with her lovely singing voice and poised stage presence.

For those who want even more Kate, EMI Classics has released a DVD of last summer’s production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni from England’s Glyndebourne Festival, in which a luminous Royal sings Donna Elvira. The soprano spoke by phone from Montreal before her recital there about her appearances in New York, how A Lesson in Love originated and how it feels being eclipsed in Google searches for her name by the new Duchess of Cambridge.

Kevin Filipski: How does it feel that, when someone Googles “Kate Royal,” they now get information on a Kate who married into the Royal Family a few weeks ago?
Kate Royal: Well, I seemed to have been bumped down a bit, haven’t I? (laughs) I was in New York for the wedding, but I still woke up at 5:30 in the morning and watched the whole thing. I actually became far more patriotic watching it from so far away from home than I actually was before. I felt very proud while watching, it looked absolutely beautiful and I think most people got the sense that they are genuinely a happy couple.

KF: How was it making your Metropolitan Opera debut singing in Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice this past month?
KR: It went great! It was a great role to start off with at the Met, since it’s not too long or strenuous. It’s an amazing place and an amazing “barn” of a hall to perform in. I was happy to be singing Gluck to start, even though it’s quite difficult and quite a stretch to be doing baroque music at the Met, since there’s a lightness to baroque that’s tough to put across in a big place, but I think we pulled it off. It was lovely to work with dancers, it was really interesting, from my point of view, it’s mainly a ballet, not that I have to dance. It was lovely to watch and to combine that with singing. I’m very interested to sing something else there, and I’m slated to return next season.

KF: When we spoke last fall, you were preparing to sing Britten’s Les Illuminations at Carnegie Hall with Orpheus, the conductor-less chamber group. How was that experience?
KR: Actually, I thoroughly enjoyed the process. In terms of doing that again (working without a conductor), it would take a lot of trust with the musicians, so I would certainly do it again but not all the time. It takes a lot to create a full democracy in music-making, but with that piece in that situation, it worked beautifully.

KF: Your current recital tour comprises a program you devised, A Lesson In Love. How did it come about?
KR: I wanted something to reflect what I do, what I love. I enjoy singing in recital, and it’s almost a separate career from singing operas. I wanted to try a concept of combining songs to create something that’s very personal to me. Obviously, the theme of love is an easy one to pick, and I wanted to create one character to sing. You usually have to create 20 separate mini-characters in a recital for each song you sing, so why not create one character through 20 songs? It’s a sung monologue, and I tried to pick songs which were written individually rather than as part of song cycles. There are well-known songs and a few less known pieces. I had the wonderful task of sifting through poetry that grabbed me, because I was focused on a performing a story that was in the first person and in a female voice. I always enjoy planning a journey to take the audience on, and doing this was a fun exercise that I think really works for me and for the audience.

KF: How will performing in a small room like the Weill Recital Hall compare with singing in a 4,000 seat “barn” like the Met?
KR: That’s the great thing about my job: you have to alter your performing style depending on where you are. A Lesson in Love was written for small audiences, and it’s difficult to create that intimate atmosphere in such a large opera house. It’s something that I enjoy doing while onstage, and I’m able to draw the audience in.

KF: A new DVD has just been released of Don Giovanni that you starred in at last summer. How do you see the visual aspect of your art in this era of social networking and other competition?
KR: I’ve watched clips of the DVD and I think that opera works fabulously on video and (director) Jonathan Kent’s idea was a very filmic one that translates very well. I think the visual has always been a huge part of my singing world, and I notice more and more while reading reviews that what performers look like, and even what they wear, are mentioned more than anything else, even in classical reviews. The media side of it has certainly changed, with a much wider audience that can watch operas live in movie theaters, which I think is a fantastic thing. The only downside might be an audience’s confusion over amplification: during a live performance, to experience the acoustic sound of an orchestra and singer is something that can never be recaptured on video.

May '11 Digital Week II

Blu-rays of the Week

Blue Valentine
(Anchor Bay)
Derek Cianfrance’s exploration of the inevitable breakdown of a marriage can’t avoid the melodramatic clichés that affect most movies in this genre, but the writer-director is lucky (or smart) enough to have two of America’s most unaffected performers to soulfully enact two people trying, but failing, to re-connect. Although Michelle Williams received a deserved Best Actress Oscar nomination, that Ryan Gosling was ignored doesn’t mean he’s any less superb: they play off each other so self-effacingly and subtly that they seem like a real couple that has a lot of water under the bridge. The movie’s graininess, which mirrors the relationship gone astray, is well captured on Blu-ray; extras include director and editor commentary, a making-of and deleted scenes.

Fat Girl
(Criterion)
Catherine Breillat’s tough films unblinkingly dissect their characters most often in terms of their sexuality, a valid and modern theme. This unsettling story (released in 2001) of an overweight teenage girl whose beautiful older sister is grappling with her burgeoning womanhood is the ultimate Breillat film: there’s a lack of sentimentality, a studied exploration of physicality and a late curve ball, a shocking denouement that makes sense for both the eponymous teen and this powerful psychological drama. Criterion’s excellent hi-def upgrade gives the movie a more sharply-defined visual palette; extras include on-set footage and two Breillat interviews.

The Illusionist
(Sony)
French comic master Jacques Tati lives again: or his animated doppelganger does, thanks to Sylvain Chomet, creator of the whimsical The Triplets of Bellville. Based on an unfilmed Tati script, The Illusionist develops a heartfelt, platonic relationship between a failed French magician and the young Scottish woman he meets while working in a local pub. Chomet understands the story’s delicacy, and his oblique but simple animation follows suit, but too bad that he doesn’t illuminate Tati’s classic comic persona. At least the quicksilver, wonderfully vivid drawings are beautifully rendered on Blu-ray, but that there’s a scant three-minute making-of featurette as an extra is unfortunate.

Murdoch Mysteries, Season 3
(Acorn Media)
This well-crafted Canadian television crime series shrewdly references such smash hits as CSI or NCIS while adding a twist. Victorian-era Toronto detective William Murdoch and his sidekick female pathologist aren’t limited by current science, as they break open tough cases in each episode by any means possible, sometimes even rubbing elbows with such contemporary eminences as H.G. Wells and Nikola Tesla. It all goes down easily and entertainingly, and the third season’s 13 episodes look striking upgraded to Blu-ray. Extras include two short making-of featurettes and the final episode’s alternate ending.

Our Hospitality
(Kino)
Kino’s terrific Buster Keaton Blu-ray releases continue with this lesser-known classic, a screamingly funny 1923 comic romp that finds the deadpan Keaton playing a dreamer whose inheritance is than expected and who is in love with the daughter of his family’s mortal enemy. The plot is only a hook on which to hang typically brilliant slapstick set pieces, including one involving a train that, even considering Keaton’s amazingly constructed stunts throughout his career, is still astonishing. Considering its age, Our Hospitality looks great on Blu-ray, and the enticing assortment of extras includes a making-of documentary, a 49-minute alternate cut and a 19-minute short, The Iron Mule, which Keaton made two years later using the same train.

Smiles of a Summer Night
(Criterion)
Ingmar Bergman was never known for his light comic touch, so it’s all the more incredible that with this 1955 romantic tragicomedy, he made one of the most graceful and touching comedies ever. Set at a country cottage one summer weekend, Bergman expertly navigates among the alternately hilarious and heartbreaking travails of four couples; his brilliant direction and script are matched by the performances of Sweden’s finest actors and actresses, including Harriet Andersson, Eva Dahlbeck, Jarl Kulle and Gunnar Bjornstrand. Gunnar Fischer’s exceptionally tangy B&W cinematography looks even more ravishing in Criterion’s superlative hi-def transfer; meager but valuable extras include a Bergman introduction and conversation between scholar Peter Cowie and producer Jorn Donner.

DVDs of the Week
Looking for Fidel
(Cinema Libre)
In his 2003 portrait of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, Oliver Stone tries to pin down the Communist tyrant, but with only middling success. Castro is always ready with a retort against Stone and the U.S., and the few times he has the chance to respond to some absurd notion, Stone doesn’t. It’s frustrating because Stone has his openings, but doesn’t take them, making Castro the winner of a lopsided contest. However, even if this is not a warts-and-all examination, Stone does show the iron fist with which Castro continues to rule Cuba, at least back when the film was made. An added Stone commentary or interview would have helped, but there are no extras.

Shoeshine
(e one)
The extreme poverty of post-WWII Rome is memorably displayed in Vittorio de Sica’s masterly neo-realist classic from 1946. This rich portrait of two boys who fall in with the wrong crowd and are arrested by the police for trafficking stolen goods is as direct and unsparing in its depiction of ordinary lives ruined by war as De Sica’s better known masterpiece, 1948’s The Bicycle Thieves. Although this DVD release is most welcome, it’s disappointing that a Blu-ray version has not seen the light of day, considering the new restoration. Still, the print is top-notch, and historian Bert Cardullo’s commentary is illuminating if at times a bit pedantic.

CDs of the Week
The Chopin Concertos
(Deutsche Grammophon)
Daniel Barenboim, tackling Frederic Chopin’s music on two new recordings, says that performing Chopin brings him closer to physical pleasure than any other composer. That is evident on this recording of both concertos, especially so during the E-minor concerto which, at 40 minutes, is a monster of a work. Andris Nelsons leads the Staatskapelle Berlin orchestra in this exciting and visceral performance, as Barenboim even makes the punishingly long opening movement (a mini-concerto in all but name) fit snugly with the following shorter movements. The less formidable second concerto is also given a scintillating reading: Chopin couldn’t have asked for more persuasive interpreters.

Stanley Kubrick’s Mountain Home
(Innova)
The jokey title composition of banjo player Paul Elwood’s latest release is a compelling hybrid of bluegrass, folk, and the modern classical music Kubrick used in films like 2001, which inspired the piece’s structure. With cryptic lyrics sung by Elwood and soprano Ilana Davidson “Stanley Kubrick’s Mountain Home” moves through so many diverse sections that it’s like a quick musical tour of Kubrick’s idiosyncratic career, in which the director never repeated himself. Another curious but listenable hybrid, “The Golden Road,” features Ellwood on banjo, Stephen Drury on piano and Min Xiao-Fen on the Chinese string instrument, the pipa.

Musical Shavings

Fry and Kudisch in A Minister's Wife (photo by Paul Kolnik)

A Minister’s Wife
Adapted by Austin Pendleton, from Bernard Shaw’s Candida
Lyrics by Jan Levy Tranen, music by Joshua Schmidt
Conceived and directed by Michael Halberstam
Starring Liz Baltes, Kate Fry, Drew Gehling, Marc Kudisch, Bobby Steggert

Performances through June 12, 2011
Mitzi Newhouse Theater, Lincoln Center, New York, NY
lct.org

There’s already a classic musical based on a Shaw play—My Fair Lady, of course, from Pygmalion—but can lightning strike twice? Based on A Minister’s Wife, the answer is no. Despite a talented pedigree, this frustratingly bland chamber musical only reminds us how much richer is Shaw’s original, Candida, unencumbered by characters continuously breaking into song, which only breaks up the piercing wit and logic of Shaw’s ever-relevant arguments about men, women, politics, religion and society.

Another of Shaw’s serious comedies, Candida takes the pulse of a marriage between the socialist Reverend Morrell and his free-spirited wife Candida. That he takes her for granted is noticed by immature young poet Eugene Marchbanks, who cannot fathom why she would stay in what strikes him as a lopsided relationship. When Marchbanks tells Morrell that he and Candida are in love, the reverend decides to test both of them: will Candida choose familiar comfort (Morrell) or youthful passion (Marchbanks)?

The skeleton of Shaw’s compassionate character dissection remains in A Minister’s Wife, but Joshua Schmidt’s pleasant but unhummable songs intrude too often on Austin Pendleton’s adaptation. Occasionally, the music elaborates on Shaw’s insights (“Enchantment” springs to mind), but mostly it replaces Shaw’s sparkling dialogue with rote tunes and Jan Levy Tranen’s pedestrian lyrics, an unfortunate trade-off.

Michael Halberstam’s estimable staging, which helps this 90-minute long chamber-music riff pass by uneventfully (if uninspiredly), comprises Allen Moyle’s cluttered set, Keith Parham’s suggestive lighting and David Zinn’s exacting costumes. The quartet of musicians—violinist Pasquale Laurino, cellist Laura Bontrager, clarinetist Jonathan Levine and pianist Timothy Splain, who also conducts—performs behind a scrim, an elegantly subtle touch.

The excellent acting quintet is led by Marc Kudisch, who compensates for a wavering British accent with a powerful baritone that gives Morrell an advantage over the honeyed tenor of Bobby Steggert, who comes off even younger than the 18-year-old Shaw asks for. Kate Fry’s charming and sweet-voiced Candida rounds out the main trio, while the smaller roles of Reverend Mill and Morrell’s assistant Prosperine are capably taken by Drew Gehling and Liz Baltes. Candida’s father, who provides a necessary sounding board in Candida, has been excised from A Minister’s Wife, another regrettable misstep.

Her Name Is Carson

Vega as McCullers (photo by Sandra Coudert)

Carson McCullers Talks About Love
Written and performed by Suzanne Vega
Music by Suzanne Vega and Duncan Sheik
Directed by Kay Matschullat

Performances through June 4, 2011
Rattlestick Theater, 224 Waverly Place
rattlestick.org

In her concert performances, singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega tells amusingly deadpan tales that are as illuminating as the direct, durable songs she sings in her conversational voice. Those tough-as-nails songs, often written from the point of view of a detached narrator, would seem to make her the ideal interpreter of the life of Southern author Carson McCullers, best known for The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, The Member of the Wedding and Reflections in a Golden Eye. But the resulting Carson McCullers Talks About Love is an awkward hybrid (part nightclub act, part concert, part solo performance piece, part musical) which never coalesces into a uniform and satisfying whole.

Vega begins the show by recounting how she “discovered” McCullers by reading a story of hers at age 17 and assuming “Carson” was a man until she saw the grim female face on the cover of one of her books. This, of course, made her want to know more about the sad-looking woman who wrote uncompromising tragicomic stories about her characters’ desperate emotional struggles. Following this intro, Vega puts on a wig, picks up a drink and a cigarette and acts as McCullers for the next 80 minutes.

Carson McCullers Talks About Love, comprising anecdotes about the renowned author and a dozen songs with music by Vega and Duncan Sheik and Vega’s own alternating biting and hackneyed lyrics, attempts to paint a well-rounded portrait of the artist as a bisexual alcoholic. And there are times when Vega’s vaguely Southern drawl and atmospheric blues or torch songs like “Song of Annemarie” and “Harper Lee” give a clear snapshot of McCullers’ complicated relationships with both men and women, but those moments are fleeting.

More often, songs like “Me of We” and “A Tree, A Rock, A Cloud” fade completely after they’re heard, despite referencing McCullers’ own writings in the lyrics. And why director Kay Matschullat thought it clever to have Vega step out of character to banter with onstage pianist Joe Iconis, whose interjections become more annoying as the play continues, is baffling. More successful are guitarist Andy Stack’s hard-edged riffs that become the voice of McCullers’ husband Reeves during several “conversations.”

Vega’s own musical sketches of loners and survivors have always carried a sardonic edge, which has been blunted in her first theatrical foray. In attempting to use her own voice as her heroine’s equally powerful one, Vega seems overwhelmed for the first time onstage, and the result is a show will probably dissatisfy fans of both of these talented women.

Unkingly 'Lear'

Derek Jacobi (left) in King Lear (photo by Johan Persson)

King Lear
Written by William Shakespeare
Directed by Michael Grandage
Starring Derek Jacobi

BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton Street, Brooklyn
Performances through June 5, 2011
bam.org

King Lear, probably Shakespeare’s greatest, most towering tragedy, has minefields galore for a director and actor hardy (or heedless) enough to undertake it: first and foremost, it needs absolute balance between high drama and low comedy to become the unbearably moving tragedy that the playwright’s psychologically penetrating poetry points toward.

That Michael Grandage’s production, imported from London’s Donmar Warehouse to Brooklyn, is only intermittently satisfying is due to many things, but mainly because of Derek Jacobi’s Lear. Obviously an accomplished Shakespearean, Jacobi curiously plays the king in an offputtingly over-the-top manner, as if he can't believe that he lucked into this gig and so uses every trick at his disposal to show that he’s worthy of enacting Shakespeare’s most indelible tragic character.

From the start, when Lear enters pitting his daughters against one another in an egomaniacal bit of games-playing that foreshadows his madness, Jacobi makes odd acting choices; his exaggerated, cutesy mannerisms, like pointing to his cheek to make sure eldest daughter Goneril plants a kiss there before saying how much she loves him, grate from the get-go. He also uses a weirdly high-pitched voice, puts inappropriate emphases while speaking famous lines (after saying “Let me wipe it first” as an obvious laugh line, he follows with, “It smells....of mortality,” his ill-timed pause ruining the overwhelming emotion of the scene), and never physically degenerates when madness starts to unwind the king.

Other lesser Lears I've seen (Christopher Plummer, Kevin Kline, and F. Murray Abraham, to name three who also came a cropper in this role) managed to allow Lear's physical state to mirror his lost grasp of sanity; by contrast, Jacobi, except for torn stockings and a crown made of twigs, remains refined and with no hair out of place, seeming singularly unaffected by the experience.

Jacobi does speak Shakespeare's language with clarity and manages to howl with rage in the final scene, finding beautiful-sounding music in those five shattering “nevers” with which he climaxes his strangulated mourning over the body of his youngest and most beloved daughter Cordelia (an unimpressive Pippa Bennett-Warner). And, in Lear’s final breath, he gives the most horrifying exhalation of air I’ve heard. Jacobi isn't a bad Lear, but that he's not a great one is maddening.

Jacobi's frustrating portrayal throws into sharp relief the rest of the cast. Gina McKee's Goneril and Justine Mitchell's Regan make formidable adversaries who look smashing in their elegant finery. Ron Cook's delightful Fool is perfectly situated between wisdom and lunacy, and Alec Newman's Edmund, though a tad obvious as the bastard villain, dashingly dispatches his devilishness against his father Gloucester (played by Paul Jesson with weighty world-weariness) and half-brother Edgar (a strong, articulate Gwilym Lee). If Gideon Turner’s Cornwall doesn't inspire much passion, Tom Beard's Albany and Michael Hadley’s Kent exude true goodness without resorting to clichés.

Brandage's direction of this swift-moving tragedy of broken families and psychological and physical casualities does nothing particularly egregious nor outstanding. Hampered by Christopher Oram's unit set of whitewashed wooden planks that stand in for everything from Lear's and his daughter’s castles to the stormy heath and bloody battlefields, along with Oram’s monochromatic costumes of black, grey and white, the director makes Shakespeare’s all-encompassing tragedy a simple domestic melodrama.

Although we do get to hear Shakespeare's glorious language—which becomes knottier and more labyrinthine as the play continues—by superb-sounding British actors, it’s ultimately not enough to make this Lear more dynamic and compelling.

May '11 Digital Week I

Blu-rays of the Week
Blow Out
(Criterion)
Brian DePalma’s 1981 thriller about a movie sound man’s accidental recording of a presidential candidate’s death owes much to Blow-Up but lacks Antonioni’s elegant construction and subtlety. DePalma is all surface, and Blow Out has too many sophomoric recreations of cheesy slasher movies; that the final punch line is an unfunny joke at its heroine’s expense is typical of this director. John Travolta is a charismatic hero and John Lithgow a properly creepy villain, but Nancy Allen is a poor femme fatale. Although DePalma’s usual visual slickness helps, the big car chase is as ludicrous as they come. As always, Criterion has given the film a loving hi-def upgrade; extras include new DePalma, Allen and Steadicam operator Garrett Brown interviews and DePalma’s 1967 experimental film, Murder a la Mod.

Glee Encore
(Fox)
If you’re a Gleek who can’t get enough of the hit TV show’s alternately tongue-in-cheek and painfully earnest cover versions of various pop songs, then this 77-minute compilation (with 35 song-and-dance routines) is definitely for you. For those who find Glee mainly an irritant can treasure the enormous vocal gifts and stage presence of Lea Michele and Matthew Morrison, both Broadway veterans who can even make goofy renditions of “Don’t Stand So Close to Me,” “Somebody to Love,” and various forgettable Journey and Madonna anthems momentarily pleasurable. The Blu-ray upgrade makes the show look sharper than before; there are no extras.

The Green Hornet
(Sony)

Michel Gondry’s big-screen take on the latest superhero has an appropriately silly attitude toward its subject, the least likely superhero imaginable, and Gondry has a skewed visual sense that doesn’t take itself too seriously either. But there’s a big “but”: Seth Rogen is an absolute disaster in the lead, a non-actor who thinks that snarling his dialogue makes him seem tough. The supporting cast is on Gondry’s wavelength, but with such a black (green?) hole at the center, The Green Hornet doesn’t have much sting. Sony’s top-notch Blu-ray release has several extras: making-of featurettes, deleted scenes, a gag reel and Gondry’s commentary.

The Holy Mountain and El Topo
(Anchor Bay)
Cult director Alejandro Jodorowsky’s entire reputation is based on his 1989 Santa Sangre and these two films, from 1973 and 1970, respectively. In both, the director himself plays the strange anti-hero, first The Alchemist and then a gunslinger. Besides being bizarre dramas in their own right, these nearly inscrutable movies are also the ultimate head trips, with surreal sequences and symbolic imagery butting heads throughout. Anchor Bay’s superb transfers give both movies an extra colorful “pop,” so even if you don’t know (or care) what the hell’s going on, you can still savor the outlandish visuals. Extras include Jodorowsky commentaries, interviews and deleted scenes.

Rabbit Hole
(LionsGate)
John Cameron Mitchell’s film of David Lindsay-Abaire’s overrated Pulitzer Prize-winning play about marrieds Becca and Howie coping with their son’s death consists of scenes like dumb bombs trained on single targets, exploding after making their point. Mitchell’s subdued sledgehammer direction uses soft lighting to make the movie look like an episode of “Army Wives” and slow motion after Becca’s flashback to the fatal accident. Nicole Kidman’s somnambulant Becca pales next to Aaron Eckhart’s intense Howie, and the other actors—Dianne Wiest, Tammy Blanchard, Miles Teller and Sandra Oh—are given scant opportunity to become three-dimensional in a flimsy psychological study that makes a foolproof dramatic subject maudlin. While the hi-def image is excellent, the flimsy extras comprise Mitchell‘s commentary and two deleted scenes.

DVDs of the Week
Marwencol
(Cinema Guild)
Mark Hogancamp’s ingenious, self-administered therapy after a vicious beating left him in a coma has been documented by director Jeff Malmberg in a startling portrait of a man living two lives, both in Kingston, NY and Marwencol, the fictional Belgian town he recreated in his backyard. The movie asks a probably unanswerable question: which town is Hogancamp’s “reality”? Hogancamp might have been turned into a kind of freak by a filmmaker with less sympathy, so Malmberg must be commended for exhaustively recording the steps that to mark Hogancamp’s painful recovery process. With impressive journalistic evenhandedness, Marwencol the movie transforms Marwencol the fictional town into a multi-layered real-life adventure. Extras include featurettes and deleted scenes.

Stonewall Uprising
(PBS)
In this engrossing documentary, several of the participants in the seminal June 28, 1969 riot of gays at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, following systemic targeting by the police, recount the events that led to this breaking open of the dam of equal rights for homosexuals. Directors Kate Davis and David Heilbroner include interviews with men who were in Manhattan to find an atmosphere more amenable to their lifestyle, only to discover that they were still considered lawbreakers (homosexuality was still illegal), along with then-city councilman Ed Koch, journalists and a retired detective. Interspersed with archival footage that places us front and center in that historic era, Stonewall Uprising is another informative chronicle from PBS’s American Experience.

20th Century with Mike Wallace: America at War
(Athena)
Taken from the 1995 “History Channel” series, this three-disc set collects reporter Mike Wallace’s incisive episodes about America’s involvement in 20th century wars, primarily Vietnam, which takes up all four episodes of disc one, with classic footage like Wallace’s own incursions into enemy territory and Morley Safer’s damning on-location shoot that showed uncaring U.S. soldiers ill-treating Vietcong civilians and interviews with U.S. officials and authors like Neil Sheehan, who wrote the ultimate Vietnam book A Bright Shining Lie. The other two discs include episodes on Korea, the first Gulf War, women in the military, America‘s elite forces and military debacles. This set is a memorably evenhanded journalistic approach to how wars were waged and covered in an era when everything could be (and was) caught on film.

CDs of the Week
Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique/Cleopatre
(BIS)
Although we don’t need another recording of the Symphonie fantastique, there’s much to recommend this disc. First, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra alternates power and finesse under Yannick Nezet-Seguin’s sturdy baton, even making familiar passages like the final movement’s “Dies Irae” sound fresh. Second, there’s another Berlioz work, the lyrical scene Cleopatre, 20 minutes of shimmering beauty sung by soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci. And third, it’s been released on a splendid-sounding Super Audio CD on the BIS label, which continues its commitment to first-rate audio in an age of MP3s.

Stockhausen: Piano Music
(Scandinavian Classics)
This re-release of a 1999 recording by a fine contemporary music interpreter, Hungarian pianist Elisabeth Klein (who died in 2004 at age 93!), spotlights the piano music of Karlheinz Stockhausen. Although famous (or infamous) for his groundbreaking and demanding orchestral and stage works, Stockhausen also composed equally revelatory keyboard works, which Klein demonstrates in her strategically-chosen program, from the opening Tierkreis to two separate versions of the seminal Klavierstuck XI, one of which closes this epic recital.